Leilani under her mother's roof, and her brother in a lonely grave in some Montana forest.

Preston's time alone in the Montana forest with the Gimp had been bliss.

An account of a disastrous fire in a Montana forest in 1949.

This section of Montana forest is under attack by mountain pine beetles.

During that sabbatical I bonded to and imprinted on Australia's beautiful eucalyptus woodlands, which continue to fill me with a sense of peace and wonder as do just two other of the world's habitats, Montana coniferous forest and New Guinea rainforest.

Under natural conditions both habitats experienced occasional fires from lightning strikes, like the situation in Montana forests that I discussed in Chapter 1.

A theoretical solution to this problem, as in Montana forests, might be frequent controlled small-scale fires to reduce the fuel load, but such fires would be absurdly dangerous in this densely populated urban area, and the public would not stand for it.